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.“But if you little hippie bitches don’t knock it off with the toll-fraud scams, you’re gonna do time.” She examined her polished nails.“If I ever meet you again, you’re gonna regret it.Now get lost before I change my mind.”The seven contraceptive conspirators immediately fled the building.The unlucky pro-life agitators, now beginning to argue violently among themselves, were being flung headlong into a series of white Chevy vans.“Whew,” Vanna said.“That could have been us!”“I think that’s supposed to be us,” Mr.Judy said, confused.“I mean, it always was us before…I guess that’s what they get for trying to be us.”“Boy, that cop Jane sure is…” Vanna drew a breath…“attractive.”Mr.Judy cast her a sharp and jealous look.“Come on! She’s the heat!”“So what?” Vanna shot back, wounded.“I can’t help it if she happens to be ’way hot.”“Great,” Mr.Judy said sourly.“Well, we’d better blow this nowhere burg before your girlfriend puts a tail on us.”“What about the Mormon Meteor?” Starlitz demanded.“Have you gone completely insane?” Mr.Judy said.“The place is swarming with feds!”“Not anymore,” Starlitz said.“This is the perfect time to boost it.They’ll blame it on Salvation’s crowd!”Sachiho, who had been listening with interest, spoke up suddenly.“It’s cool car,” she remarked.“Gnarly American car to buy for trade balance.I like it excellent! Let’s rent it and make cool video like ZZ Top.”“Great fuckin’ idea!” Starlitz said.“We have a perfectly good van that’s a lot more use,” Mr.Judy said.Sachiho looked utterly blank.“Wakarimasen…I think we Nineties Girl have to go rehearse now.” She did a little serpentine side-step.“Good-bye to you forever, okay? Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” She quipped something in Japanese to the others.They began laughing merrily and bounced off down the stairs.“Now that’s attitude,” Starlitz said admiringly, watching them go.“Those gals have got some real dress sense, too.”“But we’re done here now, Leggy,” Vanna said.“I thought you couldn’t wait to go see the kid.”Starlitz grunted.Mr.Judy took Vanna by the wrist.“I’ve got to level with you about that issue, Leggy.”Starlitz stopped gazing in admiration and looked up.“Yeah?”“There isn’t any kid.”Starlitz said nothing.His face clouded.“Look, Leggy, think about it.We’re abortionists.We know what to do about unwanted pregnancies.There never was a kid.We made up the kid after you came back from Europe.”“No kid, huh,” Starlitz said.“You burned me.”Mr.Judy nodded somberly.“It was all a scam, huh? Just some big scheme you came up with to lead me around with.” He laughed sharply.“Jesus, I can’t believe you thought that would work.”“Sorry, Leggy.It seemed like a good idea at the time.Don’t hold it against us.”Starlitz laughed.“You did it just because I got absentminded that time, and didn’t bring you back your dope.I got a little distracted, so you shaft me! Well, to hell with you! Good-bye forever, suckers.”Suddenly Starlitz ran downhill, headlong, after the retreating Japanese.“Hey!” he bellowed.“Girls! Nineties Girls! Matte ite kudasai! Roadie-san wa arimasu ka?”Vanna and Judy watched as Starlitz vanished with the Japanese behind a line of trees.“Why’d you lie to him like that?” Vanna said.“That was terrible.”Mr.Judy pulled a jingling set of keys from her pocket.“’Cause we need that van of his, that’s why.Let’s drive it off back to Oregon while we’ve got the chance.”“He’ll get mad,” Vanna said.“And he knows where we live.He’ll come back for all his stuff.”“Sure, we’ll see him again all right,” Mr.Judy said.“In four years or something.He’ll never miss the stuff, or us, in the meantime.When he sees something he really wants, he doesn’t have any more sense than a blood-crazed weasel.”“You’re not being very fair,” Vanna said.“That’s just the way he is…We can’t depend on him for anything.We don’t dare depend on him.He can’t think politically.” Mr.Judy took a deep breath.“And even if he could think politically, he’s basically motivated by the interests of the macho-imperialist oppressor class.”“I was thinking mechanically,” Vanna said.“We had a really rough ride through the desert, and we just lost our only mechanic.I sure hope that van starts.”“Of course it’s gonna start!” Mr.Judy said, annoyed.“You think we did all those years of work, and organizing, and consciousness-raising, and took all those risks, just to end up here in the world capital of reactionary family-values bullshit, with our engine grinding uselessly, unable to move one inch off dead center? That’s ridiculous.”Vanna said nothing.Contemplating the possibility had made her go a little pale.“We’re gonna drive it off easy as pie,” Mr.Judy insisted.“And we’ll change the paint first thing.We’ll lose that dumb-ass televangelist logo, and paint it up as something really cool and happening.Like a portable notary service, or a digital bookmobile.”Vanna bit her lip.“I’m still worried…The kid’s gonna want to know all about her father someday.She’ll demand to know.Don’t you think so?”“No, I don’t,” Mr.Judy said, with complete conviction.“She’ll never even have to ask.”The Littlest Jackal“I hate Sibelius,” said the Russian mafioso.“It’s that Finnish nationalist thing,” said Leggy Starlitz.“That’s why I hate Sibelius.” The Russian’s name was Pulat R.Khoklov.He’d once been a KGB liaison officer to the air force of the Afghan government.Like many Afghan War veterans, Khoklov had gone into organized crime since the Soviet crackup.Starlitz examined the Sibelius CD’s print-job and plastic hinges with a dealer’s professional eye.“Europeans sure pretend to like this classic stuff,” he said.“Almost like pop, but it can’t move real product.” He placed the CD back in the rack.The outdoor market table was nicely set with cunningly targeted tourist-bait.Starlitz glanced over the glass earrings and the wooden jewelry, then closely examined a set of lewd postcards.“This isn’t ‘Europe,’” Khoklov sniffed.“This is a Czarist Grand Duchy with bourgeois pretensions.”Starlitz fingered a poly-cotton souvenir jersey with comical red-nosed reindeer.It bore an elaborate legend in the Finno-Ugric tongue, a language infested with umlauts.“This is Finland, ace.It’s European Union.”Khoklov was kitted-out to the nines in a three-piece linen suit and a snappy straw boater.Life in the New Russia had been very good to Khoklov.“At least Finland’s not NATO.”“Look, fuckin’ Poland is NATO now.Get over it.”They moved on to another table, manned by a comely Finn in a flowered summer frock and jelly shoes.Starlitz tried on a pair of shades from a revolving stand.He gazed experimentally about the marketplace.Potatoes.Dill.Carrots and onions.Buckets of strawberries.Flowers and flags.Orange fabric canopies over wooden market tables run by Turks and gypsies.People were selling salmon straight from the decks of funky little fishing boats.Khoklov sighed
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